Dental restoratives are well known in the art. The term "restorative" encompasses for example, bridges, inlays, onlays, veneers, filling materials, composite materials, entire artificial teeth and the like. When a tooth is damaged, it is desirable not only to restore the tooth to a useful state by using the appropriate restorative and restorative technique, but also to match the restored tooth to approximate the original tooth's color or shade characteristics. This is primarily for esthetic concerns.
Because of the desire to match the original tooth shade characteristics, or those of the surrounding teeth, it has been common practice to provide materials that will change the shade of the restorative to match the desired quality. It has also been a common practice to use a shade guide having a number of tabs, teeth or other indicia showing a given color. Once the shade has been chosen, the shade guide references a mix of materials to achieve the desired shade. The dental practitioner then prepares the restorative with the given shade and applies it according to the conventional technique.
It has been found however, that natural teeth are not simply one shade of material. The tooth tends to have varying shades, translucency and opacity throughout its structure. Therefore, the previous methods of restoring a tooth have proven to be deficient with respect to shade characteristics. Further, no shade guide has heretofore existed which can be employed to more accurately match the varying shade characteristics of natural teeth.
A need exists therefore, for a shade matching system that will more closely approximate the varying shade characteristics of natural teeth. A need also exists for an efficient means of selecting a shade that is more true to the shade qualities of natural teeth.